We are collectively complicit in electing governments and sanctioning corporate behemoths that are assaulting Nature with such vehemence, such violence, such force, such wilfulness that whole ecosystems are suffering and even dying off. Rainforests, oceans, rivers, glaciers, minerals, soils, the air we breathe, the water we drink are being packaged, poisoned, and picked off, never to return to their pure, pristine, natural state or volume. We watch on as Nature is abused.
Now, under cover of COVID-19, as the people cower and keep apart compliantly in thrall to the daily infection toll, corporations race to harvest the pickings with impunity, pumping up the fossil fuels to float the boats, fly the planes, and drive the cars. They even have the gall to suck up the bail-out funds glad-handed by governments, deepening monetary and ecological debt and exarcerbating human misery by cheating the general public.
We close our eyes to the rape and pillage, distracted by our immediate precarity. We fear a virus that is, nonetheless, well on the wane in most countries. We have come a long way by flattening the curve and seeing deaths from the virus slow to a trickle, doing as mandated by our governments. Sensible stratified risk management responding to data and not outlandish modelling projections should be de rigueur, rather than the insatiable get-rich schemes foisted on us by merciless pharmaceutical leeches. They divide and conquer us with smoke-and-mirror obfuscation and demonization of common-sense rationales.
And so.... the wildfires burn, the hurricanes and cyclones intensify, the oceans heat up, the floods and droughts become more extreme, the temperatures become unbearable, unable to support life, the soils become sterile, poisoned with toxins, biodiversity crashes, and our bodies struggle to adapt to an unnatural diet of GMOs, glyphosate, synthetic additives, antibiotics, steroids, endocrine-disrupting substances. Paralysed, we fret and fluster over an orange monster and a novel virus and novel vaccine to counter with, fiddling as Rome burns, arguing back and forth and flip-flopping over appropriate measures. We mask our faces and look away as if we dare not look at the carnage as we keep our distance from our fellow human beings.
We must focus our undivided attention on a road ahead that must lead to full restoration and whole recovery of the patient; ourselves, family, friends, all humans, plants, the eco-systems that in their true essence sustain us. This is the only way to save the world we have inflicted so much damage upon, particularly in the last hundred years or so of accelerated overshoot when we had the tools to have known better. We have the knowledge and the technology. Where is the vision and courage to use them to build a future that sustains us all?
Kudos to all those who are using every fibre of their being, sometimes to their last breath on this planet, to help bring it about. They are everywhere in small pockets dotted around the world, planting and saving seeds, nurturing soils, growing food, and helping others to eat, drink, play, sing, dance, create, write, vote, and get involved with acting on our innate intuition that our current political system is broken and needs fixing. May a new generation of fierce young doers rise up in a spirit of renaissance. And may fierce, bold women and wise elders continue to lead the way.
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